Red Line FEIS - Part 1

Red Line FEIS "Travel Forecast Results" report: Utter failure

Astonishingly, the MTA's gargantuan Red Line Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) provides virtually no justification for the multi-billion dollar project - despite or perhaps because of being based on almost totally revamped population and ridership data from what was used to reject all other alternatives.

The proposed MTA Red Line is even slower than comparable buses. It cannibalizes the existing bus and rail transit system in an extremely cynical ploy to prop up Red Line ridership projections by exploiting poor captive bus riders. It restructures the MTA's already inefficient route system in an even more chaotic direction. And it is based on some assertions that are just too bizarre to believe.

There is far too much in the Red Line FEIS to cover everything, but the "Travel Forecasts Results Report" demonstrates its utter failure. Here in three parts, addressing the data assumptions and their impacts, are the FEIS comments I will submit to the MTA. Comments are due by January 28th emailed to FEIS@baltimoreredline.com with the subject heading "FEIS COMMENT".

PART ONE - TRAVEL FORECASTS DATA

Here is the problem in microcosm: The #150 bus line currently runs the length of US Route 40 from Howard County to Downtown. East of Edmondson Village, it's route resembles that of the proposed Red Line. It takes 11 minutes for the #150 bus to go from Edmondson Village to downtown at Greene/Saratoga. But the Red Line is projected to take 16 minutes for a similar trip to Howard/Lombard, five minutes more than the bus. The MTA wanted to provide a comparable Red Line station at Greene Street, which would save about a minute, but they had to eliminate it to save money.

Proposed future Edmondson Village Red Line Station hypes up the estimated 16 minute travel time to downtown, but the existing #150 bus line can do it in 11 minutes.

Under the MTA Red Line plan, however, a trip downtown originating on the #150 bus would become far lengthier than 11 minutes, by deviating off US 40 route onto Ingleside Avenue to reach the I-70 Red Line station, forcing bus passengers to transfer to rail, and thus slowing down the trip in order to include it in the Red Line's ridership numbers.

But messing with the efficient but obscure #150 bus route is just the tip of the iceberg. A large proportion of the MTA's indecipherable urban bus network would be even more mangled to feed the Red Line, even passing up far more logical connections to the existing subway and stealing bus service from non-feeder services that have little to do with the Red Line. And much of this is proposed for low income transit-dependent areas.

Phantasmagorical population projections

The foundation for all this is the revised 2035 population projections used for the Red Line, provided by the Baltimore Metropolitan Council. The key stat is highlighted on page 7 of the Travel Forecasts Results Report: "More than half of the region’s population growth is expected to occur in the Red Line Corridor for an increase of approximately 45,000 residents."

The table which follows shows the specific share of the region's population growth as 62%. From 2005 to 2035, almost two-thirds of all the population growth forecast for the entire Baltimore urban, suburban and exurban region, including the city and five surrounding counties, is presumed to occur in just a slender two-mile wide strip of land through the city and western Baltimore County. And much of this strip is water, large cemeteries and Leakin Park (FEIS Travel Forecasts Results Report, Figure 3).

Think about this. The Red Line plan assumes that the vast majority of regional population growth, starting eight years ago in 2005, would not occur in Howard and Anne Arundel Counties being fed by the far faster growing Washington region. It would not occur in Harford County which is booming from military base relocations. It would not occur in Carroll County where new subdivisions seem to sprout up monthly. And it would not even occur in urban/suburban "smart growth" districts like Charles Village, Westport, Owings Mills, Towson, Hunt Valley, and White Marsh.

The narrow Red Line corridor would get far more than all the rest of the region combined - from Pennsylvania to the DC suburbs to the Chesapeake Bay.

The Red Line's population growth projections and tortuous feeder bus plan combine to define its eye-popping daily ridership estimates of 50,000 in 2030 and 54,000 in 2035.

Breaking down the ridership

But the ridership numbers become even stranger when examined in more detail. For example, the Red Line is projected to carry nearly 3000 more daily riders eastbound than westbound (Table 23). Yes, sometimes transit riders take a different way home, but why would eastbound riders be so much more inclined to do this than westbound riders?

And the aggregate totals mask even bigger discrepancies on a station-by-station basis. At the east end Bayview MARC station, 2923 riders would get on throughout the day but only 504 riders would get off, almost a six-fold difference. At the Canton Crossing station, 5945 westbound riders would get on, but only 1906 eastbound riders would return, less than as third as many. These makes even less sense because they are major parking lot stations. What is to become of all those parked cars that the riders leave behind?

Practically every station is like this. Perhaps the most absurd example is that the ridership from the Bayview MARC station to the Bayview medical campus is given as 277, but the return volume is zero, nada, zilch.

These are examples of what is called the "black box" effect of computer models in a BaltimoreBrew.com comment by Jamie Kendrick, who has worked on the Red Line for both the MTA and the city. He was referring to the cost-benefits model, but that is largely based on the ridership model. Reality checks are supposed to be done during the model calibration process, but of course, the whole purpose of computer models is to forecast the future, not reality.

In Table 23, the severe on/off discrepancies are resolved by computing averages of the disparate numbers. Thus at Bayview MARC, the 2923 on-folks and 504 off-folks are each counted as half a person, split to yield what are inaccurately described as 1710 "total boardings".

Other parts of the analysis handle it differently. The next graphic (Figure 11) calls the same data "production / attraction", which is transpo planning lingo for defining trips by how they are generated rather than whether they are coming or going, but the volumes are the same.

Then comes the station-by-station ridership by access mode (Table 24). Only the original boarding data are presented, not the very different numbers for folks getting off the train or those odd split averages. Some of the stranger numbers in Table 24 can only be explained from the equally strange feeder bus operations plan.

The magic buses: Bus Operations Plan Technical Report

The Red Line ridership numbers are propped up by numerous proposed convoluted changes to Baltimore's already confusing bus system, which would exacerbate its already fundamentally flawed structure that is the root cause of the MTA's chronic reliability problems.

One of the strangest Red Line stations for these Table 24 data is Rosemont, on Edmondson Avenue near Poplar Grove and Franklin Streets. Incredibly, throughout the entire day, only 36 people in this very dense mostly black working class community are expected to walk to the Red Line. That's only about two an hour. In contrast, 3368 riders will arrive at the station by bus, 98% of the total. This includes six bus routes, the #10, #15, #16, #23, #38 and #47 Quick Bus. All those 3368 transferring riders would require a lot of buses, but the plan calls only for standard on-street curb bus stops.

Proposed Rosemont Station location in the middle of Edmondson Avenue, with projected ridership of

3368 per day transferring from buses and incredibly only 36 walk-ins

Four of those six bus lines - the #16, #23, #38 and #47 - would stay about the same in the Rosemont area, although the #23 would have major changes at the ends, westward in Catonsville and eastward from Bayview. The #47 (the Quick Bus version of the #15) would remain intact even though the #40 (the Quick Bus version of the #20 and #23) would be scrapped through West Baltimore. So #47 buses would be allowed to continue to whizz past Red Line trains along the "Highway to Nowhere", even though #40 and #150 buses would not.

The biggest messes would occur with the #10 and #15 lines, which would be split into branches off the existing routes which would terminate at the Rosemont station instead of going all the way downtown as they do now. Most bus riders would be confronted with a dilemma as to which branch of the watered down service they should take - the slow but more direct bus route or the more convoluted branch which requires an extra transfer onto the Red Line, and perhaps another transfer off the Red Line, and so is very likely even slower. Riders are screwed either way.

Some of the remaining #10 buses would branch off the existing route after serving Catonsville and Yale Heights in the Frederick Avenue corridor, cutting through some narrow residential streets to feed the Red Line, while other #10s would stay on the existing route to downtown and the Eastern Avenue corridor to Fells Point, Highlandtown, Bayview and Dundalk.

The #15 route would stay essentially the same from Security Mall to Forest Park to Rosemont to Poppleton to Downtown. But some of the buses would terminate at the Rosemont Red Line station, forcing the riders to transfer. And starting downtown, other buses would deviate from the current route, which proceeds out to the Gay Street/Belair Road corridor to Overlea and Perry Hall. The deviating buses would proceed eastward in the Baltimore/Fayette Street corridor to Bayview.

Bus route system structural problems

There are numerous fundamental problems with this proposed route structure. Basically, there is very little hierarchy or organization. Most of the bus routes would remain very long and unwieldy, requiring riders to slog though many miles of slow local Baltimore streets as they do now. Too many bus routes would continue to run parallel to the Red Line. To a distressing extent, bus routes and the Red Line would compete with each other since neither mode would clearly provide better service.

As part of this precarious balancing act, even some bus lines that would seem to have very little to do with the Red Line appear to get service cuts. The Bus Operations Plan Table 5 presents an inaccurate compilation of existing bus service headways (frequencies) which hides many of the changes.

For example, midday service on the crosstown #22 and #51 lines, arcing across the city from Bayview to Mondawmin to Cherry Hill, currently runs every about 20 minutes, but is presented in Table 5 as every 50 minutes (#22) and 40 minutes (#51). These are then shown as the "feeder bus" headways in Table 6, masking an apparent radical cut in service. The MTA seems to think that since these routes serve captive passive low income riders, no one will notice.

The travel demand has been rigged to assign a huge number of these wide-ranging trips to the Red Line, but many riders would not benefit from that. Moreover, riders don't like to make transfers unless there is a very good and clear reason to do so. In the MTA fare structure, riders without a pass are actually charged two full fares for the privilege of transferring, adding injury to insult.

Subway and kiss 'n' ride transfers

"Kiss and ride", planners' cheeky term for spouses, taxi drivers and other people who drop off other people at stations, has even more pronounced ridership differences from station to station. The Security Square Mall station is one of the more amorous, with 518 daily kiss 'n' riders. In contrast, the Edmondson Village station, whose kiss 'n' ridershed would include Ten Hills, Hunting Ridge and most of Catonsville, yields only two kissers per day. Is it a demographic distinction?

But the strangest numbers of all might be the Inner Harbor central downtown station at Lombard and Light Streets, which is supposed to provide access to the existing Metro subway though a proposed two block long pedestrian tunnel. Not surprisingly, it would have the highest number of boardings on the entire Red Line, a huge 9010 per day. But unbelievably, less than 20 percent (1742) would be local downtown walk-in riders.

The lion's share of the Red Line boardings at this station, over two-thirds (6062), would be subway transfers from the Charles Center Metro station to the Red Line. As a comparison, the current total ridership at this Metro station is about 6500 boardings (and 6500 de-boardings) per day. The Metro's ridership numbers have stayed essentially flat since its last expansion back in the mid '90s. The Metro to Red Line transfer through the two-block long catacomb passageway would be nearly as much as all the current Metro riders. Whew!

The MTA has long argued that a direct station connection is unnecessary between the Red Line and the Metro, even though virtually every other modern rail transit system has at least one. But with numbers like this, they're only kidding themselves.

The travel zone matrix

The FEIS trip matrix, the core of the ridership data from one place to another, is more revealing for what it does not say than for what it says. 

The FEIS does not provide a station-to-station matrix of rider origins and destinations, so it is impossible to do much sleuthing of all these eyebrow-raising numerical claims. The only substitute is a matrix of travel zones throughout the city and five-county suburban region, showing the number of Red Line riders that would begin or end at each (Table 21). Thus we know that Howard County would provide 2231 trip "productions" (mostly by people who commute from there) and 1182 "attractions" (mostly jobs). Some of these would be existing #150 bus riders diverted to the I-70 Red Line station, but this station is supposed to have 1811 transfers daily from bus to rail, so a lot more bus riders would be needed. And since the #150 service is the only bus line that would serve Howard County, and it would be much worse than it is now, the vast majority of these riders would have to come from elsewhere.

The report provides only eight travel zones in the Red Line corridor itself. With nineteen stations, that means the zones (Figure 4) are far too large and aggregated to be useful in modelling travel patterns, sometimes extending beyond what is defined as the "study area" (Figure 3). The four most central zones extend all the way up to North Avenue or beyond. Harbor East and North/Gay, two of the most disparate communities imaginable, are lumped together in the same zone. On the other hand, many Red Line stations straddle two zones - Highlandtown, Canton Crossing, Fells Point, Poppleton, West MARC, and I-70 - so it's impossible to tell who will come and go from where.

These ungainly travel zones are also used to compute rider "benefits", in terms of travel time savings accrued to transit riders. A very simple-minded summary of travel time benefits is presented in Table 18. The Red Line takes 36 minutes IVT ("in vehicle time") to go from Bayview to Social Security, while the "low cost" bus alternative takes 66 minutes. But the current #40 Quick Bus takes only 53 minutes to go even farther to CMS (which takes the Red Line 45 minutes). But somehow, this table inflates the bus vs. rail difference for in-plus-out of vehicle travel times to 84 versus 48 minutes. 

This is allegedly explained by greater congestion in 2035, but that is a relatively small factor and is largely caused by the Red Line anyway due to narrowing Edmondson Avenue and the city's refusal of confront traffic demand caused by the rampant proliferation of parking garages. Section 5.1.4 of the "Uncertainty Analysis" summarizes this by saying "there is little impact on ridership based on 2005 and 2035 bus speeds." This flies in the face of the assumed increase in the bus vs. rail travel time advantage from today's 53 vs. 45 minutes "in vehicle time" to a future 84 vs. 48 minutes total time. That makes no sense.

No wonder the model is described as a "black box". This leaves lots of FEIS wiggle room for the ridership forecasts. Data chopped up into much smaller zones is available, but there is a trade-off of confusion from too much to too little detail. They opted for less detail. As a result, we should gratefully be less confused about how much confusion there is. Capice?

Bottom transit line

The MTA is obviously willing to move heaven and earth to make their Red Line numbers look as good as possible, even though it requires making the rest of their transit system even worse than it already is. The MTA never examined other alternatives in the same way. And even with their inflated ridership claims, their plan still does not come even close to meeting the downplayed federal cost-effectiveness standard.

The MTA's ongoing track record of rail transit failure is perhaps best seen in the system's stagnant ridership and its almost complete lack of Transit Oriented Development, despite such hyped-up project areas as Howard Street, State Center, Westport and Owings Mills. The initial 8 mile Metro project promised a first year ridership of over 80,000 per day, but three decades later, it still hasn't consistently risen above 50,000 riders per day despite two extensions to 15.5 miles. All indications are that the Red Line would perform even worse.

Baltimore needs to get off this Red Line train. Continue to Part 2 of this critique.

Thanks to Edward Cohen for important contributions to this analysis.

Red Line FEIS - Part 2

Red Line FEIS system capacity and impact: More utter failure

PART TWO - CAPACITY AND SYSTEM IMPACTS

The previous article discussed how the MTA Final Environmental Impact Statement future population projections and a proposed bus and rail system network have been formulated only to bolster Red Line ridership beyond any foundation of logic.

This article demonstrates how the proposed Red Line has been designed as a kind of "streetcar on steroids", to outwardly resemble a real high density urban rail transit line while actually being as cheap and puny as possible - the worst of both worlds. The proposed Red Line combines the high cost of a heavy rail line - $2.574 billion is the most recent estimate - with diminutive low capacity vehicles that are actually narrower than many or most buses.

Defining dimensions - width

Vehicle length and width define its capacity. The determining factor for the width is the need to squeeze the Red Line onto the highest density segment of Edmondson Avenue, where rowhouses come right up to a street which carries 39,000 vehicles per day. As the only true radial arterial street in all of West Baltimore, it is one of the highest volume streets in the entire city.

As a result, the Red Line would narrow already-congested Edmondson Avenue from three to two lanes in each direction, pushing the lanes as close as necessary to the adjacent sidewalks and closely flanked rowhouses, eliminate left turn lanes and median openings where necessary and eliminate 214 out of 330 on-street parking spaces.

There's no room to widen Edmondson Avenue at this point, so they would eliminate the right

 peak traffic/off-peak parking lane and squeeze the remaining two lanes of traffic up against the narrow sidewalk to make room for a Red Line that's actually skinnier than a bus.

All of this is proposed to arrive at the key dimension: A 8.7 foot (104 inch) width for the Red Line vehicle clearance between the power poles, station platforms, and traffic lanes. But the vehicles themselves would have to be narrower than that to account for motion and sway along the tracks. You can't ram the vehicles onto the tracks like driving nails into wood. It is more likely that the vehicles would have to on the order of about 8 feet wide (96 inches) to account for the "dynamic envelope" of vehicle motion.

Compare this 104 inch clearance to that of a standard 11 foot traffic lane (132 inches) and standard 8.5 foot buses (102 inches) which often encroach on the adjacent lane. A definitive vehicle width for the Red Line is not specified in the FEIS but it would almost certainly be narrower than many buses, perhaps only about 8 feet wide, nullifying a spacious interior as a key advantage perceived for regional rail.

Lower density cities which have most recently started building low cost all-surface light rail lines, such as Norfolk, Charlotte and Minneapolis, have adopted 104 inches as their standard vehicle width, but this should not be confused with Baltimore where the Red Line would be a high cost system with extensive tunneling and where the 104 inch dimension would apply only to the lateral clearance. 

Defining dimensions - length

The defining factor the length of Red Line trains is the high cost of the underground stations. Here to save money, it was decided that Red Line trains should be limited to two cars. The cars would be about the same length as the existing central light rail line (96 feet) and thus the platform lengths would be twice that (192 feet). 

But in contrast, both the existing central light rail line and the existing Metro heavy rail line can carry far more passengers than the proposed Red Line, due to far longer and wider trains and platforms. The existing light rail line is built for three car trains with total platform lengths of about 290 feet. The heavy rail Metro is built for six car trains of 75 feet length, for total platform lengths of 450 feet. Thus Red Line platforms would be well under half as long.

Lack of people capacity

Urban rail systems are generally designed to carry very heavy peak passenger loads with a high proportion of standees, relative to all-day ridership. But the skinny Red Line trains would combine allegedly high ridership with low capacity and greatly limited standing space in the aisles. Just like buses, it would be an ordeal every time someone wanted to move past someone standing in the aisle to get to an empty spot or to the door.

The FEIS gives the highest future peak hour/peak direction rider volume as 1807 passengers, out of a total daily ridership of 54,520. This is an irrationally flat rider distribution, assuming that only 3.3 percent of all daily riders would travel past the peak point in the peak hour. It would requires the overwhelming majority of Red Line riders to travel off-peak or on very short trips which avoid the peak point.

But even so, this would result in crush loads. To attempt to accommodate it, there would be an assumed train every 7 minutes in 2035 even though they are not planning to purchase enough vehicles or build a sufficiently large rail yard to allow it.

Previous to that In the year 2030, ridership is expected to be only about 5 percent less (50,000 per day). But the opening year fleet size and train headway frequency would remain and result in 30 percent fewer trains (10 minutes between trains instead of 7 minutes).

Here's the crush math scenario: If the vehicles are 7 inches narrower than the 104 inch clearance provided (3.5 inches on each side), with the specified two seats on each side of the aisle, they would have a crush capacity of about 66 seats and 100 standees, or 166 riders per vehicle or 332 per two car train.

The projected 1807 riders in the peak hour out of 54,520 per day in 2035 translates to just over 1700 peak hour riders (5 percent less) in 2030. All six trains of those rush hour trains would carry an average of 283 riders per train, out of a crush capacity of 332 riders (sardines?) with very little margin for error or variation.

And all that ignores the space which would be required for bicycles. Bikes are ignored throughout the entire FEIS, although they've no doubt assigned their riders to the ridership totals one way or another.

So if there was more than even a slight variation in the total demand from one train to the next, the extra jostling would slow down the trains and thus result in chain reaction delays from one train to the next. Jammed trains would pass riders by, thus jamming up the platforms and the entire system. With ten minutes scheduled between trains, there would be virtually no capability for recovery.

The potential for disaster would be further heightened by the lack of any crossover tracks within the downtown tunnel, another dubious cost saving measure. If any train would become disabled in this 3.5 mile section, trains in both directions would have to run in "emergency mode" on a single track and the Red Line would descend into chaos.

Comparison with the existing heavy rail Metro

Even though they're shorter than light rail vehicles, the high flat floors and wide aisles on Baltimore's Metro cars have 76 seats and room for 166 standees, for a total capacity of 242 riders per car or 1452 riders per six car train. That's over quadruple the capacity in a Metro train as a Red Line train. The current service frequency is about the same as the Red Line expects in 2035, and unlike the Red Line, it can be easily increased further from vehicles that are already available in the yard. The service frequency is also augmented by speed, so that each faster Metro train can serve more trips. Whereas each Red Line trip would take 45 minutes end-to-end, a full Metro trip takes only 29 minutes for a 1.5 mile longer line.

Time is money for a transit operator, as is capacity. Four times the capacity and over 50% again the service turn-around means that the existing Metro is on the order of six times more cost-efficient as the proposed Red Line. The MTA system's overall operating cost impact is ignored in the FEIS.

And that is what make the MTA's feeder bus plan to prop-up Red Line ridership even more pathetic. Feeder buses are devised to take longer and more convoluted routes to serve Red Line stations when more efficient and direct routes to the existing Metro are already easily possible.

For example, the #15 bus line begins at Security and proceeds up to Forest Park, within several blocks of Liberty Heights Avenue. From that point, it would be a simple matter to direct its buses along Liberty Heights into the Mondawmin Metro transit hub, which would give it easy transfers to both the Metro and many other bus lines. On the east side, the #15 could easily provide a strong transfer at the Hopkins Hospital Metro Station. A huge amount of painfully slow redundant bus service through downtown could be avoided.

This opportunity has been available since the Metro opened to Hopkins Hospital back in the '90s, and the MTA has never done it. This has contributed greatly to the Metro's stagnant ridership, still hovering under 50,000 per day as it has for decades. That's actually less than the MTA somehow projects the Red Line would carry.

The spacious efficient high capacity bus transfer hub at the Mondawmin Metro Station, in contrast to the proposed cramped weak inefficient Red Line stations

The #5 bus line illustrates the travel time savings that the MTA systematically squanders by not tailoring its service to feed the Metro. The #5 bus line takes a scheduled 50 minutes from the Mondawmin Metro station to Madison / Patterson Park Avenue. The Metro takes only 13 minutes to get to the nearby Hopkins Hospital Station, a breathtaking 37 minute savings. If the MTA is not willing to take maximum advantage of this, why are they trying to exploit such dubious and illusory advantages for the Red Line?

In contrast, the MTA proposes to direct the #44 to take an even longer, more convoluted and redundant trip along the Red Line corridor from Forest Park to Rosemont, then run a portion of the trips all the way downtown and onward to Belair Road. This makes no sense whatsoever on a system basis. It's only possible purpose is to prop up the Red Line numbers.

Creating a true transit system structure 

The most important function of urban rail transit is to create a "system backbone", whose economies of scale and consolidated connections give the overall system efficiency and integrity. The existing Metro built in the '80s and '90s provided an excellent start, with a very high capacity and effective transit transfer hubs, most notably at Mondawmin.

With the proposed Red Line plan, the MTA has totally abandoned that concept. What the Red Line promises is a slow, low capacity "money pit" of a rail transit line where inefficient rail and inefficient bus lines can jostle and compete with each other for captive riders. Of course, the Red Line also gives developers of the city's narrow waterfront veneer something to point to when they give lip-service to transit, ignoring the system as a whole.

The MTA likes to point out that they examined the idea of building the Red Line as heavy rail instead of light rail and found it too expensive. Their contention is totally beside the point, which is the need for system integrity, not the merits of one mode versus another in serving predetermined locations. The Red Line as planned by the MTA would make the system even worse than building nothing at all.

The Red Line's overall weakness would be seriously exacerbated if in the future, the MTA ever actually attempted to build a true hub and spoke rail transit system, based on enabling riders to transfer seamlessly at a downtown transfer station. While in the short run, the Red Line's two block long underground pedestrian Metro connection renders any comparison moot to the Washington Metro or any other modern hub and spoke rail system, the Red Line's puny two-car platforms are even more damning in the long run. With the Red Line, the objectives of the original integrated 2002 regional rail system plan can now be confirmed as being a total failure.

The only positive aspect is that the Red Line's ridership projections are so wildly over-optimistic, and the proposed feeder system they've concocted is so rife for rider rebellion, that the lack of capacity will never actually be a problem. Instead, the Red Line will be just another underused transit money pit.

And the even sadder aspect is that this is so consistent with the MTA's long-term public image of incompetence. The most famous example of this is their original single-tracking of the existing light rail line to save money after revelations of cost overruns, and then closing down the entire system for a year to rebuild it. Most recently, the MTA cavalierly proposed single-tracking the Cooks Lane Red Line tunnel. They still have not retracted their original claims that single tracking would not affect speed, safety, capacity or ridership. Thus in effect, the MTA has never actually provided justification for not single tracking it.

Rather than attempting to build the Red Line, the MTA would be far better off simply converting the existing Metro into a true "system backbone" with additional comprehensive bus transfer hubs at more stations, including Hopkins Hospital and Lexington Market. Then the MTA could restructure the remaining bus lines into a rational hierarchical system of short distance "Circulators", long distance "Quick Buses" and perhaps signature streetcar lines.

This is also far more in line with the MTA's 1999 plan to double transit ridership over the next 20 years by emphasizing better use of the existing system. The 1999 plan was almost immediately cast aside in the zeal to create the 2002 regional rail system plan.

The MTA could move toward this by planning for modest incremental affordable extensions of the Metro to strengthen the system backbone. The first project could be a very short and relatively inexpensive extension from Hopkins Hospital to a comprehensive Metro-MARC-Bus hub at the huge Edison/Monument site, which would enable a dramatic improvement and clarification of the overall system structure.

All in all, this account of the Red Line's various problems barely scratches the surface. Suffice to say that the MTA's planning process has been far more about a long series of dubious assumptions to make the case to get it built, than in figuring out how to build it right. Now it's time to get serious about creating a real transit system instead of a Red Line "streetcar on steroids."

Continue to Part Three of this analysis.


Thanks to Edward Cohen for important contributions to this analysis.

10 Transit Rules

Determined riders do their best to thread through the MTA maze, but can the agency make it worth the trouble?

Photo by: detail, Maryland Transit Administration route

If only the MTA would follow these 10 rules of the road

Some ways to get Baltimore's mass transit system back on track.

Here's a little story I wrote that appeared in the Baltimore Brew on March 16, 2012 which sums up the basic principles of transit system structure that the MTA violates with impunity. It followed an impassioned account from a rider that appeared three days before, announcing she was giving up on the MTA.

Rude, sadistic bus drivers are but the tip of the symptomatic iceberg, when it comes to what’s ailing the Maryland Transit Administration. Actually, bus drivers are victimized by the same impossible transit system that riders have to deal with.

Here are 10 rules of transit planning which the MTA mostly violates with impunity, but if they would adhere to them, bus drivers could actually succeed in making the system work.

1 – The rail system should carry as much of the ridership load as possible. The empty seats on the rail system are the MTA’s biggest best untapped resource and potential economy of scale. In this regard, the Mondawmin Metro feeder bus hub is one of the few places where the system actually mostly works.

2 – All bus routes should be as short as possible. The longer a route, the more possibilities for things to go wrong and the farther buses can get behind schedule.

3 – A hierarchy of long and short routes should be established, allowing each to do what it can do best.

4 – For short routes, speed is less important and frequency is more important. High frequency makes reliability less of an issue because if a bus doesn’t come, another is scheduled to arrive soon. The city’s Charm City Circulator, which has an altogether more relaxed atmosphere than the MTA buses, can be a model. Redundancy with the Circulator, however, prevents more frequent service and needs to be eliminated.

5 – For long routes, speed is far more important, so routes should be located on faster roads with fewer stops. The MTA’s recent introduction of “Quick Bus” routes is a step in the right direction.

6 – Routes must be branded. Shorter routes can be branded for local neighborhood identity, creating a sense of local pride of ownership: “This is OUR bus route.” Riders will then demand courtesy from both drivers and each other, just like guests in our homes. Splitting the #1 line into branded South Baltimore and Sandtown lines makes a lot more sense than a temporary Fort McHenry Circulator.

7 – Fares should vary by trip or route length instead of “one fare fits all,” which defies all transportation marketing and economic sense. The electronic Charm Card creates opportunities for this which the MTA has so far ignored.

8 – There should be a comprehensive system of transit connection hubs, especially for the rail system, to replace the current system chaos with a coherent structure. An easy place to start is the parking lot next to the MTA’s Lexington Market Metro operations building on Eutaw Street, north of Saratoga Street.

9 – By far the most important rail system expansion priority must be to extend the Metro beyond Hopkins Hospital to a comprehensive transit hub comparable to the DC Metro/MARC New Carrollton Station. The official proposal to extend it to North Avenue/Broadway by 2035 would come far too late and virtually preclude any future extensions beyond that. A far cheaper extension to Edison/Monument could be done far sooner and facilitate future extensions to Bayview, Canton, White Marsh, Middle River and Dundalk.

10 – The proposed multi-billion-dollar Red Line is almost totally irrelevant to Rules 1-9. The continued existence of this plan merely demonstrates how the lame, directionless MTA has been manipulated by the developers, the Greater Baltimore Committee, City Hall, etc.

Fiscal Cliff

Y2K+13: The road off the "fiscal cliff" has already gone through Baltimore

Much has been said about the federal "fiscal cliff" of automatic tax hikes and budget cuts that are scheduled to take effect on December 31st, due to the ongoing national tax policy gridlock between liberals and conservatives. But Baltimore's economy fell off that cliff years ago, even with Baltimore mayors being free to follow any policies they've wanted. Baltimore has had no gridlock, except the old-fashioned kind on roads.

Baltimore's ongoing fiscal crisis is a preview of where the rest of the country is headed. The city already has high taxes on a dwindling tax base, supporting even higher spending that reflects the city and state's overwhelmingly lockstep liberal politics. But Baltimore has also followed the purportedly conservative course of dishing out tax breaks to the upper class who were supposed to lead to increased investment which has never materialized.

The solution should be a whole new tax policy that addresses inputs rather than outputs. What we get out of the economy is only as strong as what we put in.

Baltimore can teach the rest of the country a lesson

The stalemate is not between liberal and conservative goals. Individually and collectively, most of us have a liberal and a conservative side. Two years ago, President Obama kept the "Bush Era Tax Cuts" reviled by liberals when they were already set to expire on a mini-cliff. Conversely, "Romneycare" in Massachusetts haunted his conservative base throughout Romney's failed presidential campaign.

Maryland missed most of the onslaught of political sound bites broadcast nationally about this over the last two years, since the Democrats were obviously able to take our state for granted in their recent election victory. But basically, both sides were talking about us behind our back. The economic travails of the rest of the country have been supporting government spending allowing liberal Maryland to be the richest state in the union, even while Baltimore is still one of the nation's poorest cities.

So whatever happens at the Y2K+13 fiscal cliff will have more effect on Baltimore than the campaign volleys leading up to it. Democrats will still say tax the rich, which aims their fire directly at high income Maryland which supports poor Baltimore. Republicans will say cut federal spending, which also supports Baltimore. Automatic military cuts are also pending, which would also have an inordinate effect on Maryland. 

And beyond Baltimore and Maryland, military spending also has a global economic dimension. Middle East war cries affect the price of oil. Relations with China affect most everything else, particularly world trade which goes through Baltimore's port. The outcome of all this will probably be confusing or ambiguous, but it won't be pretty. Y2K+13 will no doubt have a greater impact than the Y2K computer crisis trumped up 12 or 13 years ago.

Baltimoreans also have arguments that we hope the rest of the country won't hear. Despite the city's virtually lockstep Democratic monopoly, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake continues a conservative mantra of lowering at least some taxes to attract investment, even if it's unclear for who, when and where. Of course, everyone wants someone else to pay and someone else's budget to be cut, not their own. But the laws of economics are not much in question. The power to tax is the power to destroy. When the country catches a cold, Baltimore gets pneumonia.

Clearly the tax system isn't working. Not enough private investment is trickling down through Baltimore's economy and the public money is either in the wrong places or isn't enough or both. It's all the same thing: misallocation of resources. The geographic money pipelines are clogged and/or misdirected, between Baltimore, its suburbs, the state of Maryland, the U.S. and the world.

Blame the game, not the playas

How do we get through Y2K+13 without just muddling through a battle of political wills? Places like Baltimore need to be played for their strengths instead of their weaknesses. Instead of playing for ever more federal aid for the "right" educational system or the "right" transit system or the "right" jobs stimulus projects, cities should simply be treated as places where people can live and work with a maximum of interaction and transportation efficiency. Yeah, that sounds vague...

But here's the point: Like the rest of the country, Baltimore will benefit the most not from picking winners and losers among the rich, middle class, poor, government agencies, private sector, military, civilians, or however one might want to slice the pie. We should be focused on how the game is played. Only then can cities like Baltimore play to their strengths.

There are actually still people who live in Baltimore because they want to, and because it serves their needs, rather than because they're stuck here or have found their niche to "game the system". It's not even something vague about potential. It's people who are really already here, and just want to make it work. Of course, it's also the thousands of people who would come to the city if they felt it would work, or have been repelled in the past. Cities work if their unique role in bringing concentrations of people face-to-face is exploited, which can't happen in the suburbs and hinterlands. To succeed, Baltimore needs only a small minority of the population, not as it was back in the heyday when Baltimore had nearly half the state's population.

To get off the fiscal cliff, we simply need to let those people flourish. It's not even just a matter of liberal intervention versus conservative laissez-faire. No matter how much the government intervenes, there will always be many people who are off of that radar screen.

Tax inputs, not outputs

Here is the clear way of how Baltimore can gain from the path down from the fiscal cliff: The nation needs a whole new approach to tax policy that addresses inputs rather than outputs. This has been proposed in many guises, such as energy taxes, consumption taxes, value-added taxes, gas taxes, sales taxes, user fees, carbon taxes, "freedom taxes" to reduce foreign energy blackmail, and cap'n trade systems to reduce global warming. It has been proposed as revenue-neutral to placate the anti-tax conservatives and as cash cows for the big government liberals.

What should be clear in this debate is that we're only going to balance our budget if we first grow the economy. It's dynamic, not simply arithmetic as has become trendy to say. There aren't enough rich people to carry us, even in Maryland, the nation's richest state. So we need to move from production (income) taxes which penalize output productivity to resource consumption taxes which encourage input productivity, quality and efficiency. People who want to benefit from less driving, less gas guzzling and more access to labor, social interaction and culture will find Baltimore. And they'll find all of Baltimore, not just the rich trendy waterfront.

Consumption taxes make a huge difference. When gas taxes go up, people find better ways of doing things and organizing their lives. Whereas when income taxes go up, people simply do less. Tolls on the new InterCounty Connector have radically curtailed traffic to the extent that questions why the multi-billion dollar road was built in the first place. That's money that did not need to be spent.

The stalemate between liberals and conservatives is just an excuse for an ongoing political fight. All Baltimore needs to do is hold itself up to the nation as a cautionary example as what will happen when we let ourselves fall off the fiscal cliff.

World's Widest Waterfall?

Inspired by 9/11:
A water feature inside the Highway to Nowhere

UPDATE 3/8/17: OK folks, Peter Tocco (bless his soul!) did do a photoshop of "The World's Widest Urban Waterfall" for me five year ago, but I never published it. So here it is, finally !!!!

For some stupid reason, I recall trying to convince Peter to do it up with a grand waterfront promenade (e.g. San Antonio's Riverwalk on steroids) and to make it "hydrologically correct" for the widely undulating elevation at the rim of the "Highway to Nowhere". But sheesh, why did I care? I never really decided where the Red Line should go either. I guess along Franklin Street (to the left of the above).

So add this to the "Low Line" proposal portfolio. And consider it an alternative to make Caves Valley's Metro West into a waterfront development and part of the Six-mile West Baltimore Greenway Loop.


It is September 11th. I just turned on the TV and it hit me. In my last post, I asserted that fixing Baltimore's "Highway to Nowhere" will require superior design, as well as creative planning. As great as the wanton destruction which has been wrought there, New York has a far larger and more profound wound to heal at 9/11 Memorial at the World Trade Center Ground Zero.

Baltimore needs the same kind of design vision, and I believe I mean that literally. A water feature that frames the destructive hole in the ground at the Highway to Nowhere ditch would be a compelling way to transform and unify the ditch, turning its blight into a focal point and preparing it for redevelopment. The sound of a waterfall thousands of feet wide would create the perfect "white noise" to aurally mask the traffic and create a soothing urban ambiance.

This photo taken inside the ditch during the half-year Highway to Nowhere closure shows a small piece of the south retaining wall, which could be converted into a waterfall. The up-close view across the grassy median and the eastbound roadway conveys how this scene does not need to be the oppressive environment that it currently feels like from a motorist's windshield or the urban wasteland above.

The world's widest waterfall at Franklin-Mulberry? It's possible. We simply need to unleash our collective creative juices instead of the heavy-handed construction machine that brought us The Highway to Nowhere in the first place, and is now trying to foist the Red Line upon us.

The LOW LINE

Introducing The LOW LINE:
Baltimore's answer to New York's High Line

Here's a Slide Show presenting graphics and photos that Peter Tocco and I have developed over the years for transforming the "Highway to Nowhere" into The LOW LINE.

Manhattan's High Line has taken the urban world by storm, and not just because it's an abandoned freight railroad transformed into a linear one-mile park in the sky. The High Line provides new insight into how unique urban environments can be beneficially fit into the city.

West Baltimore has just such an environment - the one-mile-plus "Highway to Nowhere" which has been wreaking havoc on the surrounding communities ever since it was first conceived way back in the 1960s.

The usual urban prescriptions have been tried and failed to turn these communities around: Rehabbed housing. Fighting crime. Social services. Brand new urban housing. Brand new suburban-style housing. 21st century biotech jobs. All of these have achieved only isolated successes.

Defenders of these programs say justifiably that isolated successes are a start, but it amounts to running just to stand still. The common aspect of all the solutions is that they attempt to celebrate normalcy - law-abiding guys with steady jobs who live in houses that are not boarded up.

The answer is not normalcy

But there's nothing normal about West Baltimore. To achieve normalcy there, you have to constantly shield yourself. Some do it with guns or gangs. The Heritage Crossing suburban-style enclave does it with earth berms. The biotech park does it with fumigated demolition and decked parking to minimize adverse community interactions. The city even proposed building a jogging/bike track encircling the upper rim of the "Highway to Nowhere" (applying for federal money of course) so people can get exercise while they're trying to survive their community's onslaught.

The big future multi-billion dollar transit project portends to make matters worse. The proposed Red Line would permanently embalm the "Highway to Nowhere" by using it to encase a new transit line - another solution that has been tried without success elsewhere in Baltimore. For many years, the city  even proposed building a cap over the "Highway to Nowhere" so we can just pretend it doesn't exist - a very expensive attempt at normalcy. New York went through the same process with the High Line. New York's previous effort was to simply demolish the old railroad structure and return to normalcy, which would have prevented the High Line from ever happening.

Physically, what West Baltimore needs is not normalcy. It needs a truly unique world-class environment to truly attract people, but with enough carefully designed access to its surroundings to plant the seeds of rejuvenation - to be apart from, yet a part of, the community.

This is what the High Line has done for Manhattan's West Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen communities, succeeding where the monster Javits Convention Center has not.

And this is what the LOW LINE can do for West Baltimore, connecting to Heritage Crossing, the MARC rail and Red Lines, the University of Maryland and downtown, but most importantly to itself and the adjacent forlorn communities.

Until now, the most successful Baltimore developments have clung to isolation and peninsulas and the waterfront. The LOW LINE finally offers a way to succeed by doing just the opposite.

Red Line to Harbor Point

Preparing for a Red Line that actually works

- Here are eight feasible non-rail (plus streetcars) projects
 which would prepare Baltimore for a functional transit line and vice-versa - 

Proposed Downtown Bus Tunnel could serve the Red Line when it's ready

With the recently announced major expansion of the Harbor Point development, the irrelevance of the MTA's multi-billion dollar decade-old Red Line plan is now assured. The Red Line is too expensive to build. It doesn't connect to the subway. And now we discover that it wouldn't even decently serve the new waterfront development growth it was contrived around. Instead, where every step beyond the station platform is critical, the MTA Red Line would be three to eight blocks away from Harbor Point. With the Inner Harbor reeling and Canton just a stable 1980s auto-oriented backdrop, Harbor Point's new expanded development plan puts as much development as far away as it can from its nearest Red Line station, making it just another plan for an expensive transit hole in the ground.

The Red Line was designed a decade ago to supposedly transform Baltimore. Now the Red Line has been left stalled. It was folly to expect Baltimore's redevelopment to keep waiting around for years and decades for a Red Line that will never be and won't help anyway.

So here are eight major projects which would actually prepare Baltimore to rebuild itself around a well-functioning transit system, and to incrementally and eventually build a Red Line that fits in and works, as opposed to a Red Line that could only be built in one multi-billion dollar swoop and would have to be forced into and under an alien landscape.

These eight projects would prepare the areas around the Red Line to be attractive and prime transit oriented areas, whether the Red Line was built or not. Then the Red Line could be built in small incremental manageable and affordable chunks. It would be built only where and when it is feasible, with little or no additional tunneling unless justified by real future events.

The alignment would be fairly close to the MTA's, except it would come much closer to the existing subway in the center of downtown, as well as to Harbor Point. Other inner city areas would be served much better and more suitably by streetcars, including the Inner Harbor and Canton. Bayview would no doubt be far better served by a heavy rail extension east of Hopkins Hospital.

It would no longer be a matter of putting faith in planners who insist that "if we built it, they will come", when the MTA's past track record has inspired no confidence whatsoever.

Red Liners know they have problems

About five years ago, one of the Red Line's primary authors said that if it was not built soon, it would be another generation before we got more rail transit. Well, Red Line construction is now even less in sight than it was then, so he appears to be right. "Another generation" would put the Red Line horizon at about 2030.

The price tag continues to move out of sight. Engineering difficulties recently required the proposed Red Line tunneling to be extended under Fremont Avenue in West Baltimore instead of rising to a surface alignment along MLK Boulevard. This will certainly drive up the unmanageable cost even more.There is no political will at the state or local level to do it. 

Here's the basic solution: Other major projects need to be identified which can be built along the Red Line corridor to improve the environment and facilitate future growth, whether the Red Line is eventually built or not.

Planners recognize the need for this strategy, but they have only done it in a very half-hearted way:

1 - The retaining wall at the west end of the "Highway to Nowhere" (Pulaski Street between Franklin and Mulberry) was finally demolished to make way for the Red Line. This was fraudulently hyped as the elimination of the entire highway, which was mere wishful thinking. The entire highway needs to go, but it needs to happen now, not taken as hostage to their Red Line. The next big event in the hapless highway's half-century history will be the Social Security Administration's impending abandonment of its massive Metro West complex. West Baltimore and Downtown need to be ready, even if the Red Line isn't (and never will be under the current plan).

The gorgeous Gwynns Falls looking toward Leak in Park from the Edmondson Avenue bridge, to be widened to accommodate the Red Line. The obsolete Hilton Parkway interchange is adjacent to the left, which should be eliminated to create community access to this beautiful scene, as should the huge Cooks Lane/I-70 stub interchange which also impinges on the park.

2 - The city plans to widen the Edmondson Avenue bridge over the Gwynns Falls and Hilton Parkway to make room for a future Red Line. In an ideal world, this cost would be borne by the MTA, but the city will instead pay it to keep the cost off the Red Line books.

3 - The city plans to build a "Boh-Donnell Connector" in Canton to help create the Red Line right-of-way. This is probably a worthy project in that it encourages through traffic to use the O'Donnell Street bridge over the railroad tracks, and then use Boston Street away from the community. But it is directly at odds with the plan to narrow much of Boston Street from two to one lane in each direction to squeeze in the Red Line. So what the "Boh-Donnell Connector" would really do is make Boston Street even more congested and encourage the planned Canton Crossing development to be even more oriented to I-95 and the suburbs than it would be otherwise.

Eight projects to pave the way

So here are eight recommended projects to truly pave the way for a Red Line - not the MTA's Red Line, mind you, but one that would truly prepare for Baltimore's comprehensive transit-oriented future. This far less expensive Red Line would traverse a brand new transit-oriented West Baltimore, would share a short new downtown bus-rail tunnel, would end up right at the front door of Harbor Point and Fells Point, and much more, all built when the city and transit system are ready for each other.

The following eight projects have benefits that greatly augment but far transcend the Red Line:

1 - Build a Downtown bus tunnel - This is what Seattle built to prepare for its eventual light rail line. In Baltimore it could be built under Saratoga Street starting near Greene, to Fayette Street near Gay, with short underground passages to the Charles Center and Lexington Market subway stations and escalators to the Howard Street light rail line. By being as short as possible, it could accommodate buses and facilitate transfers from many different directions, truly revolutionizing the MTA bus system. (See Brew story from Oct 2010)

Landlocked "Highway to Nowhere" median strip looking toward Downtown Social Security complex. Such wasted space !!!!!

2 - Tear up the "Highway to Nowhere" to facilitate new development - Replace it with a downsized highway and rail right-of-way to intimately orient transit to development and meet real-world traffic needs. Key anchor connections are the Social Security complex, Heritage Crossing, and the MARC station - all currently chronically isolated by highways. (See Brew story from April 2011)

Hilton Interchange Replacement Proposal - Yellow is new parkland with parking underneath, Green is new trails, Purple is consolidated Hilton Parkway thru underpass, Red is future Red Line on Edmondson Avenue

3 - Transform the obsolete Edmondson Avenue/Hilton Parkway interchange - (not just widen the overpass)  - to create new Gwynns Falls parkland integrated with Red Line needs, with hidden parking embedded into the topography. This would not only be a tremendous asset in connecting the community to its surrounding parkland, but it would also make this point a suitable Red Line terminus to enable the disruptive Edmondson Avenue section to the west to be built later or even cancelled. (See Brew story from March 2009)

Proposed Red Line thru Harbor Point, from Fayette Street (upper left) to Central Avenue (center) to edge of Fells Point (lower right). Proposed streetcar tracks in yellow.

4 - Design Harbor Point to accommodate a surface Red Line terminus right on the site - A minor modification to the recently announced Harbor Point site plan would enable the massive development to be truly oriented to a Red Line on the streets just outside its front door instead of buried in isolation under Fleet Street three to six blocks away. The Red Line terminus would then be adjacent to the intersection of Thames and Caroline Street, making it a great gateway to Fells Point. (See blog article from February 2012)

Central Avenue looking south from Pratt toward Harbor East and Harbor Point

5 - Rebuild a civilized transit-oriented Central Avenue - Central is currently the prime but ugly formerly industrial "no man's land" between Harbor East, Fells Point, Little Italy, Jonestown, Old Town, Washington Hill and Hopkins Hospital. Its crumbling underground stormwater tunnel is largely to blame. Rebuilding that would create a prime opportunity to prepare the street for a future surface Red Line instead of tearing up Lombard, Fleet, and Boston Streets for a far more expensive, disruptive and isolated Red Line tunnel.

6 - Build a streetcar system - The Red Line does a very bad job of attempting to simultaneously emulate both a streetcar system and regional rail system. Building on the excellent Charles Street Trolley study, Eastern, Fleet and Pratt Streets (but not Lombard) would be excellent candidates for a streetcar system that would be conveniently optimized to serve shorter trips. The MTA's Red Line would use the same kind of slow, diminutive low capacity streetcar-style vehicles which are not appropriate for the extensive inconvenient user-unfriendly tunneling that would make it as expensive as many heavy rail lines. (See blog article from May 2007)

7 - Reinvent the Inner Harbor again - A streetcar system would be a wonderful urban design theme for redesigning and redefining the oppressively wide Pratt and Light Streets in the Inner Harbor as livable environment. A few years ago, there was momentum to actually reinvent these streets, until the street-oriented retail pipe dream ended with the closure of Best Buy and Filenes's, the weird new Harborplace Ripley "Odditorium", the cheap new half-fast bike sidewalks, and of course, the Grand Prix making the streets safe for 180 mph race cars. 

8 - Expand Leakin Park into Baltimore County - The MTA's Red Line would pave over even more of the suburban countryside that is already occupied by the grossly excessive stub of Interstate 70, stunted at the edge of Leakin Park. This entire highway needs to be replaced by a modest narrow parkway, which would create much new parkland. A Red Line should be designed that would tuck unobtrusively into the resultant greenery of an expanded Leakin Park, hopefully in a way that would make the expensive disruptive tunnel under Cooks Lane unnecessary. (See Brew story from October 2011)

After all of the above, the MTA could still build the Red Line in accordance with the 2002 plan, but the folly of continuing to attempt to do that will become increasingly obvious, even to them.